


Eclipse

by Elementalist



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, at midnight, cause, silly dates, who's here for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 21:01:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19093066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elementalist/pseuds/Elementalist
Summary: Ronan is made up of impossible stuff.Ronan knows this because he thinks of it all the way up the mountainside, the BMW roaring as it pulls them up and up and up the curving, snake-like street.Them means Ronan in the driver seat, and it means Adam in the passenger seat. It means the small distance of space between their hands. It means the moment when there isn't any space at all.-x-In which Ronan takes Adam on a late night drive up the Henrietta mountains.





	Eclipse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bobtheacorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobtheacorn/gifts).



Ronan is made up of impossible stuff. 

He dreams impossible dreams, and he pulls impossible things from them, forests or ravens or fawn-legged orphan girls. And to ask Blue, or Adam, or--rarely--Gansey, Ronan is impossible to talk with, to ride in a car with, to share a booth with at Nino's. Etc., etc. The list is as many miles long as the road cutting up the blue Henrietta mountains.

Ronan knows this because he thinks of it all the way up the mountainside, the BMW roaring as it pulls them up and up and up the curving, snake-like street.

 _Them_ means Ronan in the driver seat, and it means Adam in the passenger seat. It means the small distance of space between their hands. It means the moment when there isn't any space at all.

Holding hands with Adam Parrish--another impossible thing.

Ronan adds it to the list as he stomps his foot down. The car rushes forward, matching Ronan's heartbeat stride-for-stride. Adam's fingers clutch his as if that'd make him slow down.

It only makes Ronan want to go faster.

"Where are we going again?" Adam slides his stare across the seat when he asks. Ronan feels it like a new sort of touch. Shivering. Electric. Like magic, almost always magic.

"I told you." He didn't.

"You didn't," Adam replies calmly.

Ronan's smile is sharp and toothy, like barbed-wire. It snags Adam's attention. Ronan watches him stare out of the corner of his eye.

"If you don't want to ride, Parrish, you can fucking walk."

Spring exists all around them, Virginia in full bloom. Pollen never so much as bothered Ronan with a sneeze but he's been around Adam long enough to know the blooming Bradford Pears will leave his eyes swollen and watery. The white-crowned trees bracket the highway, petals drifting across the warm beam of the BMW's headlights, snow-like, on the breeze.

Ronan hears Adam give a cursory sniff, feels his hand shift, move, fingers ghosting up his wrist, playing with his bracelets. Adam withdraws just in time to miss the show of Ronan's skin rush with goosebumps.

"You can say it's a surprise," Adam remarks.

"You can try shutting up."

"Smooth, Lynch."

It wasn't, not at all, but Adam's reply is designed to feel like a victory, the two words climate as June and just as volatile with ozone and storm.  Ronan can only pick at the surface of them, because when he glances over, Adam deftly avoids eye contact by turning his head, once again watching the world speed by them in off-white streaks.

He thinks he sees a smile. The air is dangerous with it.

At the top of Ronan's Impossible list is Adam Parrish.

And tucked away in a margin, scrawled like one of Gansey's enthusiastic notes, were Ronan's feelings towards him, the feelings Adam returned.

Ronan flexes his fingers around the steering wheel, and he punches the gas like he punches everything else--without worrying what happens after. The car lurches forward.

This time, Adam reaches over and kicks the stereo on, speakers pulsing out throbbing baselines and synths. Ronan catches it now, the smile Adam tried to hide.

"Daft Punk," Adam asks, and there's a moment when their eyes meet.

He says, not bothering to mask his pleasure, "Hell, you actually know your shit."

Adam laughs, soft as the tracing touch of his fingers. Again, Ronan shivers. His fingers flex and spread against the leather, then squeeze hard, knuckles blanching.

"No," Adam tells the shadows between them. "I know _you_."

 

* * *

  
Clinically speaking, if the mountains were a spine, Ronan stops somewhere around the neck.  The windows confess a picturesque portrait of a field dressed in full, wildflower regalia. Adam recognizes some--wild daisies, blue bonnets, the prickly purple heads of thistle blossoms. Blue, he thinks, could probably name them all. 

But as to why they're here, in the middle of the night no less, remains a mystery until Ronan kicks open his door and jerks up something from the backseat.

"C'mon," Ronan grunts, hefting whatever it is with him. A duffel bag, sagging in the center,  weight heavy and unbalanced.

Adam expects a lot from Ronan, all of it loud and screaming and violent. There might be switchblades in the duffel bag. Adam wouldn't be shocked. Or dreamed things, maybe, improbable, hardly tangible, and somehow beautiful, too.

He can't catch the thought before it flies into his head:   _Just like he is_.

Midnight is Ronan's midday. It suits him like sunshine and clear skies suit Gansey, or windy days suit Blue. Ronan navigates it better, more comfortably, and the world makes room for him, it must, because Ronan doesn't stagger, doesn't trip, just walks around the front of the car with a gliding smoothness that comes from knowing a place a long, long time.

"Parrish! Get your ass out here." 

Adam starts. He fumbles for the door handle and spills into the field. Flowers tickle his bare calves. A river hums nearby. Ronan tosses the duffle bag against the hood of the car and busies himself with it while Adam joins him. 

"What is it?"

Ronan's tone is dry. "A surprise."

Adam scuffs his knuckles against the smooth charcoal paint, the heat off the engine kissing his skin. Beside him, bathed equally in the soft headlights and harsh shadows they leave behind, Ronan empties the contents of the bag out. There's. . .a lot of color, for one thing, and just. . .a lot. Of small rectangles screaming with bold logos and descriptors. Of bags. Of a roughly folded square that turns out, with a snap of Ronan's hands, to be a quilt.

The picture starts to form. And for some reason, it stirs something in Adam's chest.

"Ronan."

He glances over, and Adam feels his smile more than sees it. "Don't ruin it."

Ronan shuffles the avalanche of snacks away--that's what they are, an assortment of gas station favorites, Skittles and Reese's and a plethora of chip flavors ranging from salt and vinegar (Ronan's favorite) to BBQ (Adam's). He drapes the blanket over the hood and jumps up on it, watching Adam expectantly. The wind is perfumed,  part floral, part Ronan's leathery cologne.

" _Am_ I ruining it?" Adam picks through the candy and sticks of beef jerky, trying hard to keep the smile off his face. "If you'd been that worried, you'd have left me at home."

The truth strikes hard even if Ronan doesn't show it. Adam sees it in the careful tension corded up his arms, in how he eases back on his hands. In all respects, Ronan looks more like he's reclining on a couch than a scorching car hood, and somehow, it fits Ronan's sharp angles better than anything else could.

"Yeah. You are."

Adam tilts his head. He drops what he is holding and neatly slips his hands into his pockets.

Ronan continues. " _Jesus_ , get up here."

"You didn't leave any room."

One of Ronan's dark brows arches up. Another fluttery feeling tickles Adam's stomach.

"I did, if you know where to look." Moonlight draws the monster out of Ronan's already devastating face--and something more, something other, the thing that always brought Adam back. "I thought you were good at finding things."

That's Gansey, but Adam doesn't correct him. The air feels static-heavy and pressing, and it has nothing to do with the early taste of summer humidity. Adam won't break the spell of it--the sensuous, coaxing call of Ronan's words and the promise lurking in each rounded vowel--by mentioning anyone else.

Adam climbs up on the hood, then where Ronan is deliberately positioned, with his back to Ronan's chest. Sinking back happens involuntarily--Ronan's toned arms hooking around his middle does not. This, it seems, is all going according to some plan Ronan's been chewing on. Adam isn't exactly mad about it either.

Now that he can hide it better, Adam lets himself enjoy this, and his smile blooms full-force.  "Am I still ruining it?"

Ronan's low voice knocks him in the chest like a shot of strong whiskey. "Not anymore." There's a quiet moment between this and what he says next. The suggestion is uttered softly, on the breath of a sigh, and Adam almost misses it when Ronan tells him, "Look up."

He does.

Now, Adam realizes their location is specific, chosen not only for seclusion, but for the small break in the canopy above. The trees leave a small, nearly perfect circle of the sky, a cutout of stars and, at this hour, a heavy, red moon. It hangs overhead, turning the swath of nighttime into a large, red eye. Adam blinks up at it. He half-expects it to blink back.

A blood moon. A Harvest moon. A moon caught in partial eclipse. It's as beautiful as it is unsettling, and it's such a _Ronan_ gesture Adam unconsciously lowers his hands to grip at Ronan's wrists.

"Who knew you were a romantic," Adam teases.

Ronan scoffs. Which, truthfully, has less of a bite when it's pressed against Adam's shoulder. "Who the hell said that?"

" _I_ said it. Just now."

"You're wrong."

"I'm not." He picks up one of the jerky sticks and whips Ronan's leg with it. Ronan jerks his knee up slightly, but all it does is jostle them closer together, and Adam suspects this was done on purpose. "Do I need to make my case? I have evidence. Lots of it."

He starts lining candy bars up Ronan's thigh to make his point, much as he can before Ronan shakes them off. They scatter on the quilt as before.

"Yeah, right. Whatever you got is shit. Won’t hold up in court."

Adam thinks he has a solid case, thank you very much. He still has jars of lotion for his cracked hands, because somehow, a new one always appears whenever he's running low. And the mixtape is still in his car's radio, never removed. This little picnic-of-sorts is another item on a growing list of things that not only call out _romantic_ but make up part of who Ronan is.

"You sure about that?" He turns slightly, peeking over his shoulder.

Ronan's dark blue eyes are the exact color of 2 a.m., with twice as many stars.

And they're awfully close. Closer than Adam thought they'd be. His lips part automatically, expectant, realizing that when he does, Ronan does the same. 

Kissing Ronan Lynch isn't something you get used to. 

Adam remembers the first as all speeding miles and feeling full for the first time in years. The second was feverish and left Adam raw and aching inside. They all had similar effects on him, a combination of being ruined and completed all at once. Tonight isn't any exception. Under April's red moon, kissing Ronan Lynch felt like stepping too close to a fire pit and accepting the payment of burns. It's plunging headfirst off a cliff into a pond of arctic water. It's both the drowning and the relief of gasping in a lungful of air.

Ronan's hands lift, cradling Adam's face between warm palms, and after, his lips shift like he's pouring words inside Adam's mouth. Adam almost tastes the syllables. They're sweet and smoky and full of prayer.

Adam breaks away. 

Ronan's hands don't leave his face. His eyes open but don't lower. Adam studies their color again, the fan of Ronan's lashes when he blinks. Above, the moon keeps watch. Petals drift by, catch in Adam's hair.

Midnight is quiet during spring. The frogs sleep. It's too early for the cicadas. Now and then, a soft owl hoots or a nightingale sings a mournful tune. The river keeps speeding along wherever it is, white noise in the background. But all Adam hears, all he _really_ hears, is every soft breath expanding Ronan's chest.

Adam lays his hands over Ronan's, moving his fingers where they fit best--in the spaces between his.

"Oh, I'm pretty fucking sure," Ronan says.

It takes Adam nearly a full thirty seconds to understand what Ronan means, and by then, Ronan has lowered his hands and selected a candy prize from the variety he brought. Adam wants to smack the bag out of hand. He wants to kiss the sugar off his stupid mouth.

Adam drops his hands and heaves out an exasperated noise. "You're impossible sometimes, you know that?"

Ronan's answering smile, teeth stained red from hard candy shells, is absolutely wolfish.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I recently started rereading The Raven Cycle after getting my friend, bobtheacorn, into it too. This is for her, who read it first, as always. I hope you guys enjoy!


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